Individual Freedom in the Post-Corona Era

In this essay, I examine the concept of individual freedom that varies depending on cultures through different attitudes toward the administrative policy of wearing masks. Many Westerners criticized the enforcement of the policy in East Asia as the oppression of individual freedom. I argue that the criticism is based on a narrow understanding of the problem and that individual freedom becomes obscure even in the West as we are entering the society of surveillance capitalism due to technological revolution. Confucian cultures give us a context in reference to which we reflect on individual freedom in the post-pandemic situation.